The flat-screen revolution has spawned a lot of dramatic and innovative loudspeakers, many of them different takes on the Definitive Technology Mythos — a family of sleek aluminum speakers that almost single-handedly reinvented the category. Not to be outdone by its emulators, DefTech has now pushed that edge again with its newest Mythos, the ST.
The Mythos ST speaker also deploys a so-called D'Appolito array of two midranges vertically sandwiching a metal-dome tweeter — plus three "racetrack" drivers, obviously chosen to allow a very narrow, low-diffraction cabinet. Only the middle racetrack is active. Its flankers are passive radiators: motor-less, massive, stiffly suspended diaphragms that do the job of a port in a vented system, thus allowing more bass from smaller cabinet volume.
SETUP
Beyond affixing their polished-granite plinths, setup for the STs meant simply connecting speaker wires. Each ST includes a line input for a subwoofer output from a pre/pro, but I used the speakers' own crossovers, as their design principally intends. Besides a power cord, there's also an LFE Level knob on the back to set the level of the onboard bass section. This functions identically regardless of whether bass comes in entirely via the speaker wires or in part via a line-level connection. You can use both if you choose, with the line input receiving only LFE and other-channel bass for multichannel use.
I left the STs for a few days of 24-hour break-in before fine-tuning the placement and the sub-level settings. In my setup, the speakers worked best with their front baffles some 3 feet-plus from the wall, toed in a goodly amount, and with the sub-level knobs set to about 11 o'clock — substantially lower than the 1 o'clock that Def Tech suggests as a starting point. These are tall speakers, and their sonic center is 6 inches or so higher than that of most smaller towers. This matches my seating and screen layout well, but some listeners may find it a bit elevated.
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The Short Form
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| Price $3,598 (AS TESTED) / definitivetech.com / 410-363-7148 |
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Snapshot
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| A superb pair for serious music that's equally capable on a multichannel team. |
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Plus
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•High-rez, hugely dynamic sound •Impressive deep-bass may eliminate need for a sub •Dramatic tall-and-slim looks |
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Minus
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•Tall image for some layouts •Still requires a serious sub for full-bore bottom-octave |
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Key Features
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| •($1,799 each) 6 x 10-in racetrack woofer, (2) 6 x 10-in racetrack passive radiators, (2) 5.25-in cone midranges, 1-in dome tweeter; 300-watt Class D woofer amplifier; 51.5 x 6.8 x 9.5 in; 70 lb |
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Test Bench
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The Mythos ST has excellent sensitivity, uniform directivity, and good bass extension for a small tower. The floor-bounce notch at 150 Hz can be partly compensated by increasing the bass level if the user can accept an additional 4 to 5 dB of bass below 100 Hz. The upper-frequency response was marked by a 3-dB dip between 6 and 8 kHz. The speaker's bass limit was 32 Hz, where it hit 70 dB SPL before exceeding our 10% distortion threshold. Full Lab Results |
Occasionally, I fire up a loudspeaker and know immediately that, generally, it sounds very, very good. This was one of those times. Within 60 seconds, I had identified even, full-range balance from the top to the bottom frequencies, with genuinely deep bass, a wholly uncolored midrange, and generous but smooth, clearly extended treble. In short, all the major musical food groups were at the party.
Voices sounded uniformly natural and "uncanned," no matter what I played — and the Mythos STs produced the same kind of wide, deep, and spatially convincing stereo image that makes me think, "Oh, yeah, that's why," whenever I stop into the better big-buck audiophile demo rooms at trade shows. A great example of this came via Amanda McBroom's Amanda live-to-disc CD, which I've heard hundreds of times on hundreds of systems. Its dramatic depth and almost excessive ambience virtually leapt out of the STs, throwing a broad, deep, richly detailed big-band stereo soundstage across the front of my listening area.
I also encountered the kind of "hear-into" detail that made me anxious to move on to higher-def recordings, which I did without delay. I have an SACD of the Brahms Clarinet Trio and Clarinet Quintet that offers intimate ambience and tremendous resolution. Played through the STs, this sounded up-close, honest, and detailed, capturing every rasp of the clarinetist's escaping breath and every rosiny touchdown of a bow. The quick runs up and down the clarinet stayed absolutely sure in location as well: The instrument was rock-steady laterally, and I almost felt the forward/back movements as the player made emphatic gestures on accented notes. Each of the other instruments "owned" its space, too, in a way that only top-level playback squeezes out of stereo.
From there I moved on to the 48-kHz, 24-bit stereo mix on the DVD-Audio disc of Donald Fagen's classic Kamakiriad, a recording that's about as clean as studio pop gets. The DefTechs played ungodly loud with no sign of strain or dynamic shortfall, and their ability to pump out quick, snappy rock bass approached world-class. At truly ridiculous volume, the bottom end simply stopped getting louder but without producing ugly noises, and the top became a bit, um, steely — which might be attributable to the amplifier reaching its endpoint, too. But honestly, if you're listening that loud, you deserve whatever you get.
All rooms are different, and as mentioned already, I had to pull out the STs well into mine to smooth output through the middle-bass. But I was never 100% satisfied with my setup in this respect. I frequently found myself tweaking the woofer-level knobs by tiny amounts or walking the speakers a few inches closer to or farther from the wall, to vary the balance and linearity of deep-bass and upper-bass — both of which the speakers clearly reproduced in ample measure, and with great control. How much of this is room-related, I can't reliably say — our measurements later showed the ST to be essentially flat by design but subject to the usual floor-bounce notch in the upper-bass that you get with any tower in a real room (see Test Bench). But either way, I don't want to overstate the case; these are subtle adjustments I'm noting.
Stride-for-stride down to about 35 Hz, the DefTechs' woofer sections matched my everyday sub (a 12-inch Velodyne priced somewhat north of two grand). Below that, the STs fell off, but not too precipitously; in my room, they still produced meaningful output at about 28 Hz, but not as much below 25 Hz. Clearly, the hot setup here would be to run the STs as "large" front left/right speakers, with bass from the LFE (and other channels that need it) diverted to an honest 18-Hz subwoofer.
Of course, I couldn't resist testing how the Mythos STs worked for home theater, so I threw them into a 6.1 array with my everyday Snell center and surrounds and with my Velodyne sub handling bass for those speakers plus the LFE channel. Wow! The system literally shook the building on the avalanche sequence from xXx, yet it also delivered balanced, wonderfully detailed playback from my best multichannel music discs. I have little doubt about the impact and detail that would be delivered by an ST pair set up with its Mythos family mates.
BOTTOM LINE
The Definitive Technology Mythos ST loudspeaker isn't cheap, but it's an impressive reproducer capable of true audiophile-quality two-channel sound and highly detailed, room-rattling home theater. Its height and somewhat elevated image location, and (possibly) away-from-the-wall placement, may need to be considered. But it's hard to imagine anyone feeling shortchanged. Two-channel, five-channel, more-channel: This is a terrific design, period.
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